Winter Is Half Over Already. Here's Our Midterm Report Card On Snow, Temperatures

Winter 2023-24 has already reached the halfway point and has exhibited a weird split personality from December into January.

Wait, i​t's really half over? Meteorologists group seasons a little differently than the solstices and equinoxes arising from the alignment of the sun's most direct rays and the Earth's tilt.

T​hey consider meteorological winter from December 1 through the end of February, a three-month period that lines up much better with the coldest three months of the year in many Northern Hemisphere locations.

G​iven that, we wrapped up the first six weeks of meteorological winter in mid-January. Snow and cold weather certainly happens well into spring in northern and most mountainous locations in the U.S. But, much like midterm exams in school, we thought it would be useful to examine how the winter 2023-24 season is going, so far.

Temperatures: December didn't feel like a winter month. It ended up being the nation's record warmest December in 129 years.​ Seven states from Montana to Wisconsin had their warmest Decembers in 2023.

T​hen came January's abrupt colder pattern change with multiple cold outbreaks from the Northwest, Rockies and Plains to the Deep South.

When combining the widespread December warmth with the recent January cold, that still leaves parts of the country warmer than an average first six weeks of winter.

A​ccording to the Southeast Regional Climate Center (SERCC), most reporting stations from New England to the Great Lakes and upper Midwest have had at least a top five warmest start to winter on record. Fargo, North Dakota (tie) and Muskegon, Michigan, have each had their record-warmest winters to date through Jan. 18. Only the winter of 1913-14 started out warmer in the "Icebox of the Nation", International Falls, Minnesota, than in 2023-24.

(Further beef up your forecast with our detailed, hour-by-hour breakdown for the next 8 days – only available on our Premium Pro experience.)

Precipitation: Much of the East Coast has seen one of the wettest starts to winter on record.

A​bout 20 reporting stations in the Northeast, from Virginia to Maine, have had their wettest winter to date on record according to the SERCC. That includes Albany, New York; Baltimore, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Portland, Maine; and Providence, Rhode Island. Not since Woodrow Wilson's first term as President has Washington, D.C. had such a wet start to winter.

A​lso weirdly wet during what is typically a drier time of year is Florida. Most major reporting stations in the state had among their 10 wettest starts to winter. Jacksonville had its second-wettest winter start in 153 years, according to the SERCC. This is something typical of stronger El Niño winters there.

Snow lagging: It's no surprise then, given the overall warm winter, that snowfall has been lacking in some areas.

O​n the map below, you can make out a blue-colored donut hole centered in Minnesota and parts of the Northern Plains. Both Fargo and Minneapolis-St. Paul had only picked up 4 inches of snow from Dec. 1 through Jan. 18, less than a quarter of their averages.

California's Sierra Nevada mountains have also been a snow laggard. As of Jan. 18, the water content of the snowpack, critical for replenishment of the state's reservoirs once it melts during the summer dry season, was only 60 percent of average for this time of year.

Snow loving: It hasn't been all bare ground this winter.

A​ parade of five named winter storms in roughly the first half of January dumped heavy snow from the West to the Midwest, South and Northeast.

M​ultiple storms combined to dump 27 inches of snow on Des Moines, Iowa, in January, alone.

W​inter Storm Heather dumped 7 inches of snow in Nashville, almost double what both Fargo and Minneapolis have seen in six weeks.

H​eather and Winter Storm Indigo even brought snow to the Northeast's Interstate 95 corridor, much of which had gone more than 700 days since they last picked up just an inch of snow in one day.

B​y January 17, almost 59 percent of the contiguous U.S. had snow on the ground, the most expansive snow cover so far this winter, and a stunning contrast to the lowest Christmas snow cover in 20 years.

M​ORE ON WEATHER.COM:

• F​ebruary - April Outlook

• W​hat Spring Is Like After A Strong El Niño
• B​illion-Dollar Disasters Set US Record In 2023

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. His lifelong love of meteorology began with a close encounter with a tornado as a child in Wisconsin. He studied physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, then completed his Master's degree working with dual-polarization radar and lightning data at Colorado State University. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.